Work-Out Your Way To Build Twitter Followers Organically

Hello folks, welcome to the 4th part of Social Media Success (SMS) series. As we have learnt on to build audience for Instagram and YouTube in the previous articles, today we will see about doing onTwitter.

Twitter is more relevant now than ever before, considering the shift from brand-centric marketing to people-centric marketing. It is a great social media platform for expanding your reach to your desired set of audience, and there are a lot of ways to achieve that. Buying followers is easy, and that may not be good for business, because those followers may not be interested in you and what you have to offer, plus, they may also be inactive accounts.

So, you want to have genuine followers who have a common interest that would aid in generating lead and increasing conversions.

Well, here 12 ways to organically grow your Twitter audience:

1.Follow-First

A follow-first strategy is the most effective way to grow a targeted Twitter following fast. It’s no secret that following is reciprocal on Twitter. It simply means you find accounts you believe will get value from your content (potential customers) and follow them.

Listen for people who are tweeting words, phrases or hashtags related to your industry.

The truth is, this is how so many social media experts and influencers have built their Twitter following. Again, they won’t talk about it much but it’s pretty standard.

Make sure you follow people and companies that have a solid position in your niche. Following the right people is a sure way of getting noticed especially when you start a dialogue or reply to them.Unfollow people who don’t follow you.

2. Tweeting Inspirational Quote

You want to drive traffic to your website and activating it into leads and customers. Everything you do on Twitter can and should trace back to this singular goal. Inspirational tweets allow people to get to know and like you, which makes them more likely to click when you tweet a link to your content.

People like being inspired. And, even more so, people like to inspire others.

You typically see better than average retweets on inspirational messages. That’s great for you because you get exposure to non-followers who often come check out your Twitter profile – which you’ve (hopefully) set up with a great pinned tweet that drives traffic!

3. Be Active

Nobody wants to follow someone who is completely inactive, who doesn’t tweet, retweet or join any conversation on social media. Increase the frequency of your tweets so that your audience and readers can notice you and see that you are always active.

Also, join twitter group chats. This is an excellent way of connecting with people and building more meaningful and deeper connections.

4. Tweet Informative Content

Rich and informative contents are highly paramount to building a list of genuine Twitter followers organically. Your tweets/information must be rich and highly informative, entertaining; offering some kind of solutions to common problems and meeting the needs of your followers. That way, they come for more.

The use of text alone doesn’t work much these days, use videos and pictures that helps to pass the message to get the attention of your audience.

A smart way to promote your business is by creating blog posts that help your audience and introduce people to your business in a Non-Pushy way.

You can also run a Twitter contest to attract new followers. If your prize is related to your brand, then it can also help find targeted followers who are interested in your area of expertise.

Make sure to keep your content within what we call the 80/20 rule: 80% informative and engaging and 20% brand oriented. Remember that Twitter is a platform mainly for socializing and networking, not for sales pitches.

5. Give away free eBook, whitepapers

Reports and white papers are still an essential form of communication for industries and markets around the globe. You can even include your Twitter ID in the footer of every page.

You can get your white papers and reports distributed by trade magazine distributors across North America, which will often give you the customers’ information. Offer the report or whitepaper on your own website, as well as on Twitter itself. You may find that the link to your report gets retweeted, getting you valuable exposure!

6. Craft a Compelling Bio

Your bio is what people will read when they discover your profile – so make it a good one! Your bio box should describe who you are and what you do. In this section you have 160 characters to describe yourself. Use as much of the available 160 characters as possible to cover the topics you are likely to tweet about and encourage people to follow you.

People are more likely to trust and connect with you if they see your face so use a picture where your face is clearly visible for your profile pic.

7. Write Killer Headlines

Killer headlines are a sure way of grabbing peoples’ attention. This will help you increase your twitter following and the number of clicks on your tweets.

8. Analyze and Optimize

A twitter audit will help you balance your original tweets, replies, and retweets. Itwill give you a clear path that you should follow in terms of what you should change and important aspects that you should focus in order to build a large and strong twitter following.

9. Leverage Your Other Social Media Profiles

Link to your Twitter profile from your other profiles across the web. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. On your Facebook page include a link to your Twitter profile in the Websites section.

Link your Twitter Name in your email signature. Tell People They Should Follow You On Twitter

10. Using #Hastags

Hashtags can help people find your tweets through trending topics, and Twitter search. Hashtags do open your tweets to other tweet streams and are proven to help you get more retweets, so using them (especially when you are starting out) can help you open your tweets up to a larger audience than just your followers.However, use it sparingly!

11. Tweet Fascinating Pictures

People like to see vibrant pictures. Pictures tend to retweet well, and the more retweets you get the more followers you can potentially net.

A few cool Twitter photo sharing tools include:

·        TwitPic – TwitPic lets you share photos on Twitter

·        Instagram – iPhone photo sharing service.

·        Tweetphoto – Photo sharing made simple

·        Yfrog – Share your images and videos on Twitter

12. Create Twitter lists

It can be hard to follow and engage with a lot of people. You may have prospect brand advocates, consumers and partners (co-marketing is on the rise) on your Twitter page. How do you distinguish between them and keep track of all their activities?

One simple solution is Twitter lists. Don’t include more than 20 people on each Twitter list as that will defeat the purpose and make interaction difficult. Create multiple sub-lists for your major categories.

So, these are some of the best growth hacks for Twitter. If you find it useful, you may follow us on Twitter as well @digierra.